


Pull Your Little Arrows Out and Let Me Live My Life

by indevan



Series: Rock Band AU [27]
Category: Dragon Ball
Genre: Alternate Universe - Rock Band, Awkwardness, Dream Sex, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-05
Updated: 2018-01-05
Packaged: 2019-02-28 18:55:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13277790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indevan/pseuds/indevan
Summary: It isn’t the first time he’s had an explicit dream about someone he knows.  As a teenager, Raditz was the star of most of them, but recently he’s been replaced by Turles.  Kakarrot, though, is...it’s Kakarrot





	Pull Your Little Arrows Out and Let Me Live My Life

**Author's Note:**

> i'm not going to lie, [perytonhynde](http://perytonhynde.tumblr.com) put it "there's no plot reason for this to happen. it's just to ruin poor broly's day"

Broly doesn’t know why he came, two days after everyone else arrived, but here he is.  The hotel is modern and they have five rooms on the tenth floor, all in a row.  He walks into the one he’s meant to share with Turles even though they aren’t a couple, will never be a couple, and there’s clothes everywhere.

It’s warm here, warmer than back home, and he feels the heat settle on his shoulders like some kind of animal he wants to shake off.

It’s so quiet and he feels like they’re out there, enjoying vacation and not paying him mind.  No one waited for him.  He walks to the balcony and make out their shadowy forms at the pool and hear vague snatches of laughter, the muffled sound of an acoustic guitar.

Broly walks into the bathroom to find a scrawled message in the dark lipstick he knows Bulma favors written in Turles’s handwriting:  _ come down to the pool! _

He can’t really say no to that.

It’s cooler by the pool and the air feels good on his face.  He still feels slightly out of place, slightly a step behind.  He watches the others in the blue glow from the lights under the water’s surface.  In the dark, he can see Kakarrot first, sitting on a lounge chair and bent over his guitar.  Chi-Chi is next to him and she gives him a polite smile.  Across from them, Bulma’s wrapped a blanket around her and Vegeta.

He sees Turles giving a wry smile, maybe proud of him for coming down at the behest of his message, but it’s Lapis of all people who stands to greet him.

“Look at the moon,” he tells him. “It’s perfect.”

Broly looks up to see that he’s right.  A picturesque crescent hanging in the dark, starry sky.  A view you can’t appreciate back home in the city.  He looks back at Lapis and he remembers how he used to resent him.  Back when he was in love with Raditz and saw them get together quite literally up against the wall after a show.  Now he takes him in, his unearthly, almost alien beauty, and he feels ill at ease.

“Come sit.”

Broly feels almost hypnotized as he follows him to an empty lounge chair.  Lapis takes a spot on one with his boyfriend, which is expected.

“Was it all right?” Chi-Chi asks him.

“What?”

“The plane ride,” she says. “Everything.  We were worried about you.”

She puts a hand on Kakarrot’s shoulder and smiles.  He doesn’t look up, too involved in playing a B7 chord, using his finger to try and fill in for the bass but being unable to get it to sound cleanly.  Now and then, startlingly, Vegeta will call out criticism or suggestions from his blanket cocoon.

“I’m fine,” he says. “I’m here.”

He isn’t sure how he ends up in the pool but he’s swimming, no, simply treading water.  Everything is lit up and wavy, flickering mystical blue light over him and everything.  Kakarrot is swimming with him, disarmingly naked.  His guitar is abandoned on the lounge where Chi-Chi still sits with her knees drawn to her chest.

He swims up to him, grinning like he has a secret.

“Hey.”

He puts his arms around Broly’s neck and, for some reason, he lets him.  They tread water together, and it’s not lost on him that they’re nearly the same height floating in the water like this.

“Do you still hate me?” he asks and his eyes are hypnotically dark, almost swirling.  Broly feels lightheaded and high even though he hasn’t taken anything.

He shakes his head, because it’s true.

“Good.”

He kisses him and no one seems to react, or care.  Chi-Chi, to whom he’s  _ engaged, _ doesn’t even move.  Broly’s legs are helpless with water and tangle with his.  The pool is spinning, turning, and his head turns with it.  He’s aware of Kakarrot’s hands on his body, his face, in his hair.  Wet and slick and hot--so hot.  Even the cool of the water can’t douse how hot it is.  His hands are like irons, so hot they’ll leave a mark.  Broly doesn’t know why he’s going along with it.  He doesn’t hate Kakarrot anymore, that’s true, but he’s never been one of his favorite people.

Even so, he kisses him back, fervently, desperately.  He feels like he’s being devoured, being drowned.  He feels Kakarrot’s hand snake down, lower, and wrap around him.  He feels him stroke him and his body is weightless yet heavy.  He hears himself moan into his mouth.  Feels Kakarrot move to bite down on his neck while his hand continues to work.  His muscles are tight, like he's about to come.  Kakarrot bites down on the meat of his shoulder and he lets out a pleasured cry.

Broly’s eyes fly open and he finds himself staring at the water stains on the ceiling of the apartment.  He sits up on his futon and drops his head into his hands.  A nonsensical dream.  Not only could none of them afford luxury vacations somewhere warm but--Kakarrot.  And him.  Heavy action.  God, no.

It’d be one thing, he reasons, if it was Turles.  That makes sense--but Kakarrot?

“Sorry, did I wake you?”

Part of him expects to see Kakarrot standing in their kitchen, but the voice isn’t his.  Broly turns and looks at Lapis--the real one.  He stands on the yellowed, cracked linoleum and manages to look effortlessly stylish even in a pair of pajama pants and an oversized shirt that clearly belongs to Raditz.

“No,” he says. “I was awake anyway.”

“I forgot not all of you sleep like the dead.” He gestures first to the bedroom and then to Turles, who hasn’t even stirred. “Do you want some breakfast?”

Lapis holds up a box of frozen waffles, name brand, because they can afford that now.  Broly stares at the yellow box with its red writing and nods.  He isn’t hungry--how could he be, after that dream?--but he knows he ought to eat.

Broly gets out of bed and pads towards the kitchen, holding his arms loosely around himself.  It’s not as cold as it’s been, but even after it all, their radiator is still a piece of garbage.

“These are buttermilk,” he says, looking at the box.

“Yeah.”

“Aren’t you a vegan?”

“Vegetarian,” he clarifies.

“Oh.”

Broly nervously chews his lip, unsure what else to say.  He and Lapis don’t really talk, they aren’t really friends, and he feels somehow guilty being there as if the real Lapis has a line of communication with the dream Lapis who witnessed whatever happened between him and Kakarrot.

It isn’t the first time he’s had an explicit dream about someone he knows.  As a teenager, Raditz was the star of most of them, but recently he’s been replaced by Turles.  Kakarrot, though, is...it’s Kakarrot.

“You alright?”

Lapis tips his head to the side and, if his hair wasn’t pulled back into a tiny squirt of a ponytail, it would have fallen in his face.  Broly looks at him, wondering if he could tell him.  He  _ is _ the closest he has to a neutral party.

“Have you ever had dreams about someone you know?” he asks and then, at his blank stare, he sighs and clarifies, “Sex dreams.”

“Who did you dream about?” Lapis jerks a thumb towards Turles’s sleeping form and Broly shakes his head so fast he thinks he gives himself whiplash.

“It doesn’t matter, just.  Have you?”

He nods.

“Yamcha--you know, the singer from Kame Kami?  Before me and Raditz got together, when we were all on that tour, I had a dream about him.  And others over the years.”

That isn’t helpful.  He knows he isn’t alone but he can’t push the subject further without telling him.  Honestly, he regrets saying anything.

The first two waffles pop up and Lapis slides them on a plate and then pushes the plate to Broly.  He puts one waffle, ostensibly for himself, in the toaster and pushes the latch knob down.

“I didn’t see syrup,” he says. “Sorry.”

It isn’t his fault, but he tells him that it’s okay anyway.

“Whoever you had a sex dream about--Turles--don’t worry,” Lapis says. “It’s regular.  You’re my age, right?”

“I turn twenty-five in June.”

“Okay, so you’re a little younger than me.  I turn twenty-six at the end of May and, yes, before you ask, that makes me and my sister Geminis.”

Despite the dream troubling him and the fact that this is probably his first ever conversation with Lapis, Broly can’t help but smile.

\--

He manages to put the dream out of his mind for the rest of the day, but all that changes when he arrives at the Monkey’s Paw that night.  It’s a simple show, King Kai said.  An hour set at the bar where they “got started,” and Broly had been looking forward to it.  The break had been nice, but he’s happiest when he’s playing an instrument.  He hadn’t thought about what playing a show would mean, though, who he would see.

“You alright?”

Kale touches his arm lightly, her dark eyes imploring.  He’s spent the majority of the day with her, not talking about it.  He and Kale both have such odd, strangely similar relationships with sex that the topic rarely comes up.  With Lapis, anyway, he thinks too many people know even if his guess was off.

“Fine,” he says tightly, because right in his line of sight is Kakarrot.

Eerily, he’s holding an acoustic guitar and playing a B7 chord and trying to fill in the bassline with his little finger.  Broly’s fists clench.  There’s no pool, no lounge chairs, but Vegeta is still giving him angry yet helpful advice on how to get it to sound right.

“Hey, Broles.”

He’s never been more relieved to see Raditz.  He, along with the others, are on the low platform of a stage, setting up.

“We brought your stuff,” Turles calls. “Since you’ve been MIA  _ all day.” _

He says it with such emphasis and pouts so exaggeratedly that all rational thought leaves Broly’s head.  How can he be on a stage with someone he has a crush on  _ and _ the guy he had a sex dream about?  He feels a hand squeeze his arm comfortingly and he looks down at Kale.

“I’m going to wait for the others,” she says quietly. “Are you going to be okay?”

Broly nods because it’s all he can do and she kisses his cheek before walking out to put her stuff on an empty table.  It, along with most of the others, will be pushed back once the show actually starts.

“I was hanging out with Kale,” he explains.

He can’t help but watch Kakarrot as he gets up on the stage.  That fucking dream.  It couldn’t have been anyone else, could it?  Broly switches his gaze to Vegeta and thinks he would have rather have had one about  _ him _ than Kakarrot.  He’s never been close to their lead singer--for years, he knew him by reputation alone and it was enough to make him keep his distance--but he’s never disliked him or found him as annoying.  Why did his subconscious have to do this to him?

\--

He thinks it would be better after the show.  At least, he did when Kakarrot decided the best way to sound check was to belch into the microphone.  It’s not just the act of seeing him, watching his hands work the fretboard and being reminded of what those hands did in his dream.  Watch him lick his lips when he took pauses in a song and remembering how that tongue swiped at his lower lip.

And it’s enraging and  _ embarrassing, _ because it’s Kakarrot.

Afterwards, it’s nearly as bad.  There’s reminders everywhere.  When Bulma comes up to them at the bar, she’s wearing the same dark lipstick that dream Turles had used to write the message on the mirror.  He shudders, wondering how long this will bother him.  He knows better than to think he likes Kakarrot.  At this point, he honestly wishes he  _ did _ just have another dream about Turles.  At least that makes sense.

“You seem pissy.”

Caulifla addresses him, her head tipped to the side.  Broly presses his lips into a thin line.  He really doesn’t want to hear it.

“Kale said so,” she presses on.

Next to her, Tarble rolls his eyes.

“Actually, she said ‘Broly seems distracted.’”

Caulifla grins and elbows him.

“I forget you aren’t Cabba who just lets me say shit.  Right, Cabs?”

She turns to Cabba, who looks oddly sad, furtively glancing at Tarble every now and then before biting his lip and staring at the ground.  Weird, but also none of Broly’s business.

“Tell her I’m fine.”

Kale materializes out of the crowd and looks at him in concern.

“I’m fine,” he tells her.

Anything he can say, which he doesn’t want to, is preempted by Bulma.

“I’m cold,” she complains loudly. “Can we toss the after party and go?”

She shivers exaggeratedly and wraps herself around her boyfriend.

“Definitely,” Kakarrot says.  He’s right up next to Broly and it makes his skin prickle in a way he hates. “Chi-Chi wants me home anyway.”

They move as a sort of entourage through the small, crowded bar and Broly feels transported back to before, when things were simple.  When they weren’t semi-famous and playing at Shugesh’s bar.  Hell, he wouldn’t even mind yesterday when press hounded them but at least he didn’t have to deal with this weird dream.

“I hate the fucking cold,” Turles gripes once they’re outside.  He flips the collar of his leather jacket up and shivers.  Broly thinks he looks a bit like James Dean when he does that and he’s relieved at the surge of fondness that accompanies it--a return to normalcy.

He knows he doesn't like Kakarrot, not like that, and he just has to push it from his head and get back to his regularly scheduled programming.

Raditz nods. “Seriously.  You’d think having this much hair would keep me warm, but it really doesn’t.”

Broly feels a bit outside his body, and the cold isn’t bothering, but he nods along anyway.  He watches Vegeta light cigarettes for him and Bulma and concentrates on the twin, orange lights in the darkness.

“Let’s get out of here,” she says with an exhale of smoke. “Like, let’s go on vacation.  My treat.”

“Tonight?” Vegeta asks, cocking a brow.

Bulma slips her cigarette between two fingers and leans in, grinning broadly.

“No, not  _ tonight. _  But soon.”

“Sure,” Turles says with a smirk. “If you’re paying.”

The others murmur their agreement.  Broly swallows nervously and inches behind Kale.  He doesn’t like the sound of this.

“I’ll ask Chi-Chi...but I dunno.” Kakarrot shivers under his jacket. “But let’s go somewhere warm.”

“No!”

The word is out before Broly can stop it.  At once, all heads swivel towards him and he gnaws on his lip.

“I...uh.  Like.  The cold.”

**Author's Note:**

> http://vertigoats.tumblr.com  
> [AU timeline](http://vertigoats.tumblr.com/post/166537761367/since-after-the-first-few-the-fics-in-rock-band)


End file.
